14 DAY TRIAL // Looks like OCZ is trying to expand its technological portfolio, having just bought a developer of virtualization software and hardware solutions, as well as file caching.
OCZ has been very active on the market of NAND Flash-based storage products.
Even during the ongoing CES (Consumer Electronics Show, 2012), it has revealed the Everest 2 SSD controller and a Thunderbolt SSD, not to mention 16TB PCI Express models.
Nevertheless, the company still wants to get better and extend its reach.
Thus, it decided to buy SANRAD, a maker of flash caching and virtualization technologies.
“SANRAD's software is a wonderful complement to OCZ's Flash technology,” said Oded Ilan, CEO of SANRAD Inc.
“We are excited with the opportunity created by this unique combination between storage virtualization, caching and PCIe Flash storage. We are proud to join the OCZ development team and to establish its design center in Israel.”
SANRAD has been making virtualized environments based on NAND flash since it came into being, back in 2000.
It has also developed the VXL software, which enables flash caching and virtualization for VMWare vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Xen.
The transaction was valued at $15 million (11.79 million Euro).
“This transaction is an important step in OCZ's enterprise solid state drive strategy,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group.
“It significantly enhances the ability for customers to increase datacenter performance and efficiency by putting more virtual machines (VM) on a server without slowing down the VM's ability to access stored data, thus substantially lowering the overall cost of deployment. SANRAD's VXL has the ability to optimize caching strategies based on the application and support for VMware's vMotion, which sets the solution apart from others in the industry, allowing enterprises to finally realize the benefit of running a single unified virtualized environment.”